


Clean hands

by Gwen77 (orphan_account)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lawyers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-15 07:11:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7212838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Gwen77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lannister was smiling widely and she shook his hand, reluctantly, because it would be rude not to and she was never rude. Lannister could afford to be rude, mocking, friendly, lazy, comfortable. She had to be professional, always, always. Her career wasn't like his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_It's not fair_ was a sentence Brienne never let herself think. Nothing was _fair_. Fair was not even the point. But she had a pounding headache that the stupidly expensive-smelling Lannister  & Lannister coffee had done nothing to help, her client was looking at her with doubt in her big brown eyes, and Jaime Lannister and this shitty biased arbitrator were obviously fucking golf buddies or something. Lannister was smirking at her as if he could hear the babyish whine at the back of her mind - it's not _fair_.

She told herself to shut up, ignored the hot crawl of anger up the back of her neck, and focused.

"Section 17," she said, "stipulates" -Lannister widened his eyes mockingly ("oh, big words, Tarth") - but she ground on. "Environmental impacts have to be compensated. My client's home -"

"Thank you, Ms Tarth," the arbitrator said, interrupting her. "Jaime?"

" _Unreasonable _environment impacts," Lannister said. "A little extra dust-"__

"If you look at the medical reports-"

In the end, it wasn't a bad day's work. Amy didn't get all her medical bills, nothing close, but the $15,000 was something. Sometimes something instead of nothing was the best you could hope for.

Lannister was smiling widely and she shook his hand, reluctantly, because it would be rude not to and she was never rude. Lannister could afford to be rude, mocking, friendly, lazy, comfortable. She had to be professional, always, always. Her career wasn't like his.

"Good to see you again," Lannister said, toothy and insincere, his eyes dropping to her collarbone where she knew the creeping red was most visible. She ignored that, dropping his hand and turning to nod to the arbitrator, aware that even her face was blotching unpleasantly now and unable to do anything about it.

The town was full of privileged douchebags, selfish amoral lawyers in shiny suits with gleaming teeth, but Lannister got under her skin like no one else. It was something about the way he looked at her. She was invisible to most of them, a joke, a nuisance, Brienne the Beauty, the pro bono martyr, but Lannister always looked straight at her, intent, merciless, knowing, cataloging the way her jacket strained at her shoulders and sagged over her chest, the tiny ladder at her knee, her blotchy obvious blushes.

 _Why did it have to be him_ , she thought, grimly taking Amy's elbow and leading her to the elevator. Of all people. It was always him, somehow, on the worst cases, the most hopeless, the ones that made her feel most like she was coming out of her skin with anger and frustration, and he was always there to grin as she fought to exhaustion for some helpless, hopeless, best-that-can-be-hoped-for compromise.

Amy was crying -- with happiness, with relief. She'd been afraid she wouldn't get anything. $15,000, after everything -

"It's too much," she was saying. "Thank you. Brienne. I'm so-"

"It's not too much," Brienne said, quietly, but Amy was so grateful, her forehead damp with sweat, that she didn't say anymore. Why spoil it? Something was better than nothing and so many people got stuck with nothing.

*

Lannister called her that night, as he did after every case, and she was too tired to resist picking up.

"What," she said, shortly.

"You did well," he said quietly, no humour in his voice, no mockery. "No one else would have gotten her a penny, Tarth. You know that."

Her eyes prickled. 

"Thanks," she said, instead of _fuck you_ , and he sighed warmly, chuckled, as if he had heard the real words.

"Come work for me," he said suddenly and she almost dropped her phone. "I'll let you keep doing the pro bono shit, you know I will, but you're fucking wasted on Baratheon."

"What? Jaime-" she said, shocked, and could have bitten her tongue. She should have stopped calling him that at least five years ago. "I mean. No. Thank you." 

"Why?" he said, sounding irritated. "He's _wasting_ you, Tarth, and you can't tell me-"

"I'm flattered," she said sharply. "But I'm happy with Renly."

There was a little pause. She could hear him breathing, steady, thoughtful, and braced herself for him to say something horrible.

"You're happy," was all he said but it was bad enough. Sweat broke out over her forehead. Her throat went tight. 

"I'm doing good work," she said. "Valuable work."

"You're doing work you could have done straight out of law school," Lannister said. "And he pays you like a paralegal."

"I don't work for the money," she said, her voice sharp with contempt.

"It shows," he snapped, contemptuous too. "That outfit you showed up in today-"

"Great, fashion tips-"

"You look like you've given up," Lannister said flatly and her stomach dropped horribly. "Tarth. I'm - this is me trying to help you, okay? Stop. Following. Baratheon. Come work for me, move to New York, go be a ballerina - but stop letting him -"

She hung up. He didn't call back. The next day, Renly smiled at her as he handed her a file, and she smiled back, cataloging his rumpled suit and faded tie, his abstracted gaze.

Renly never gave up on even the hardest and most hopeless cases; he believed profoundly in the system and was always shocked and disbelieving when justice didn't prevail; was always sure that next time it would. It made her throat feel raw to look at him. Of course he wasn't out in the trenches like her, he only took the big important cases now, but still. He was so sure she was like him - idealistic, hopeful - and she almost felt like she still could be when he was in the room with her. 

It wasn't a lot - it wasn't everything - but it was good enough. Lannister didn't know anything about compromise, about loss, about taking what you could get. He didn't know her, for all his needling. She was happy, or as close to happy as she had ever expected to be.


	2. Chapter 2

When everything fell apart - when Melisandre and Stannis left the firm, when the leaks began and the allegations and the investigations and Renly was bankrupted and then disbarred - Brienne didn't take Lannister up on his offer. She couldn't work for Lannister & Lannister; it would feel like selling her soul. But it was difficult, job hunting. She had a reputation for dogged consistent hard work but not brilliance and she knew that her face wasn't exactly a fit at most firms.

The few interviews were humiliating, punctuated by long silences and nervous laughter and some sarcasm from the inevitable asshole on the panel. Half the time, she didn't make it to interview. Her savings began to dwindle. But dogged was the one thing she knew how to do. She sent out resume after resume after resume, worked at applications every day after her morning run, and it finally paid off. She landed an interview with Catelyn Stark.

Stark & Co was a small firm, a family firm, but they did good work and they wanted Brienne. Her life took on a new shape. She still felt bereft without Renly, haunted, but the work became absorbing in a way it hadn't been before. Catelyn gave her a lot more responsibility, and some more money. She also insisted Brienne hire a tailor.

Brienne didn't like how the new clothes fit - they hid nothing, they sharply outlined her square-shouldered boxy absence of figure - but she had to admit they felt more comfortable. Nothing pulled or tugged anywhere. She could just move. Lannister smiled the first time he saw her walk into court in one of her new suits, his gaze tracing slowly down her torso, but he said nothing about it and the uncomfortable prickle faded quickly once she was on her feet and the judge was listening.

Things got, slowly, better. She won a case outright, twice. She got good-enough settlements for clients, more and more often. With a disloyal twinge, she saw that Catelyn was just a better lawyer than Renly. She hardly ever threw Brienne into some situation at the last minute, with only an hour for prep. She paid for a stenographer, a secretary, a paralegal.

It was still a hard job, fighting her clients' corner against some corporate giant with billions of dollars and Jaime Lannister on its side, but she stopped feeling despair. The system was flawed and failure was always a risk but it didn't _have_ to happen. She knew what she was doing now.

And she owed it all to Catelyn. So when she came into her office one day and found Jaime Lannister there, lounging in her chair with his feet on her desk, and Catelyn put her hand on her shoulder, she didn't say anything. She waited.

"It's my daughter," Catelyn said, her voice thin. "Sansa. She's in trouble."

Brienne drew a breath. Lannister was watching her the way he always did, intent and faintly mocking.

"What kind of trouble?" she asked.

"Criminal," Lannister said coolly and Brienne's stomach went cold. How was that possible? What -

"My sweet half-sister," Lannister said, watching her face for the flinch she managed to suppress. "Claims that your Sansa embezzled half a million dollars when she was an intern at Casterly Rock last year. She's going to be indicted for theft."

Brienne looked at Catelyn.

"You hired-"

"He's the best," Catelyn said, sounding defeated, and Lannister smirked. Brienne stared at them both, feeling stupid and out of step. What was she missing here?

"But," she said slowly. "Your half-sister?"

Lannister's eyebrows went up.

"My _estranged_ half-sister," he said evenly. "I've had nothing to do with Casterly Rock for over a year. I haven't spoken to my sister or my father in two years. There's no conflict."

Brienne put her hand on her desk. She couldn't help it. Cersei. Jaime and Cersei. She'd tried so hard not to think about it - not to think about anything that had happened in law school - that she felt blindsided, stunned stupid, as if she was finding out about it all over again.

Jaime's mouth was a thin tight line. Catelyn said, "Brienne? Can you work with Mr Lannister? I - if you could, I would be so grateful. I don't trust anyone the way I trust you."

Brienne swallowed, her mouth dry.

"Yes," she said. "Of course I can. Yes."

She _could_ she told herself firmly, and Lannister laughed softly as if he had heard her desperation.

"Come on, then," he said. "Let's go."

It looked bad. The money had arrived in Ned Stark's bank account, where it still was. Sansa had told three different lies, already, when asked about why she stayed late so often, what she had been working on. She wouldn't say what she was doing, all those late nights alone in head office, and she wouldn't talk about the money, and she wouldn't talk about what she did at Casterly Rock.

"I don't know," the transcript said, again and again. She had said the same thing to the police and her mother and to Lannister.

"She'll talk to you," Lannister said confidently, watching Brienne sift gloomily through the bundle. "You can break her, Tarth."

Brienne snorted.

"When her mother couldn't?" she said. "How?"

Lannister shrugged.

"However you do it," he said. "I've seen you with clients."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Brienne demanded and Lannister grinned.

"You know," he said. "The knight-errant stuff. Undying loyalty. They eat it up."

"I care about my clients," Brienne said coldly. "That's my job. It should be yours."

Lannister shrugged, looking bored.

"Fine," he said. "Go care about Sansa Stark, see what you get out of her. I'll figure out the bank accounts."

She nodded stiffly and he smiled, suddenly, ruefully.

"You care about your clients," he mimicked softly. "You're already looking at Catelyn Stark as if she hung the moon. Christ, Tarth. Is there anything or anyone you _don't_ care about?"

It was a perfect opening. _You_ , she should have said. Her mouth wouldn't move. She shrugged instead, feeling her face heat as always, and walked out. There was only one person Jaime cared about, she knew, really cared about, but she was - estranged, he'd said, as carelessly and easily as he would have announced that he'd fired his secretary. She shook her head, impatiently. It didn't matter. Sansa Stark was the priority now.


	3. Chapter 3

Sansa Stark was covering for someone. Brienne had thought that might be an option, reading the transcripts, but she knew it was true the moment she saw the girl's face - she was scared, her mouth a little tremulous, but the blue eyes were steady, stubborn, intensely wary. Brienne sighed, sat down, waited. Sansa looked at her. 

"You work for my mom," she said, after a short silence. Brienne shook her head.

"I work for you," she said quietly. "Your mom told me to."

Sansa frowned a little.

"I'm _your_ lawyer," Brienne explained. "Not hers, not in this. Anything you tell me is confidential. Anything I do will be with your permission. Do you understand?"

Sansa tipped a shoulder.

"I guess," she said, skeptically.

"I won't stop you going to jail if you want to," Brienne said gently. "I think it's a bad idea, but I'll do what you need me to do if that's - if you believe it's worth it, for whoever you're protecting. But I need to know what you want."

Lannister snapped down the pause button on the dictaphone and stared up at her.

"Are you fucking serious? _That's_ what you do with them?"

"I believe in autonomy," Brienne said, seriously, and Lannister gave a short bark of laughter, shook his head. 

"Fine," he said. "Did it work?"

"Yeah," Brienne said, unable to keep the warmth of triumph out of her voice, her smile. "Eventually. She doesn't want to go to jail. She's covering for your sister's - I mean for, uh, Joffrey. Baratheon. She was letting him into the database."

Lannister's face didn't change, but something in the air did. Brienne felt her stomach tighten. Shit. This Cersei thing was going to get in the way if they didn't address it. She couldn't speak the name - her stomach turned just thinking about hearing it again - but she couldn't let her fucking cowardice get in the way of the job.

"All we know is that he was accessing the database," she said carefully, watching Lannister's still face. "It doesn't mean-" she drew a breath. "It doesn't have to mean that he's into something illegal. Or that he took the money. But it might mean that. Or that could be our best case. Are you - Lannister, are you _sure_ there's no conflict? I won't jeopardize my client because you've got something to prove to your - because of your personal -" 

"I'm sure," Lannister interrupted, shortly. "There's no conflict. If Joffrey's our best argument, fine, we'll pursue it." He hesitated, scowling, and looked away from her. "You either take my word or you don't."

Brienne looked at him, finding it easier now that he was staring down at the desk, not meeting her eyes. He'd aged since law school: new lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, his cropped hair showing only a hint of rich gold. He still looked like Lannister - arrogantly handsome, cocksure, ruthless - but there was a tiredness about him that she would never have seen when she first met him, when he had cocked his curly golden head at her and given her an incredulous once-over and she had felt a jolt of dislike that had startled her with its intensity.

She hadn't loathed many people back then, at twenty-one, sure that most of what was wrong in her life was everything that was wrong with her. Lannister was the first. Despite everything that had come after, despite his firm strong hand pulling her out of that horrible frathouse basement in second semester, despite his head on her shoulder, half-asleep, during exam week, despite his faint pleased grin when she talked over him in contracts, that first loathing still held, somewhere. But.

"Okay," she said. "I'm. I'll take your word."

He glanced up at her and she saw surprise. Visible for only a blink, but there. He expected so little of her now. She sighed.

"I know you don't lie," she said flatly. "Come on. I know that."

"Of course I _lie_ , Tarth," Lannister said, trying to sound amused now, his voice a little shaken underneath. "Don't be-"

She shook her head.

"You know what I mean," she said. "You wouldn't lie about this."

He fell silent, studying her. There was an odd uncertainty in his stare, a softness that made her skin crawl a little. She took a step back, took out her notebook. 

"So," she said. "Anything on the money?"

"No," he said, still watching her with that unsettling new look in his eyes. "That's the weak link. Why would anyone but Sansa transfer half a million dollars to Ned Stark? Why would Joffrey?"

"Why would Sansa?" Brienne countered. "It doesn't make any sense. Ned Stark wouldn't touch the money, anyone who knew him would know that."

"Weak," Lannister said sombrely, and she nodded. They needed something better than that. _They_. She was already thinking of him as being on her side. All it had taken was his word and now there was a relieved grateful feeling, a lightness in the pit of her stomach, that made her uneasy. She had good reason to take his word, she knew that - she knew him well enough for that - but that was no reason to _trust_ him. 

"I don't," she said aloud, and stopped, embarrassed. That was melodramatic. They were colleagues, for pity's sake, she didn't have to get into her personal feelings here.

"Got it," he said lazily. "You hate my guts, we're not friends, you never want to see me again after this case, blah blah. I think you should interview the accounts team at Casterly Rock. Figure out who has authorization to move that much money around. I'll talk to the banks. Deal?"

She took a breath.

"Fine," she said shortly. He grinned at her and she felt the helpless tug of a responsive smile at the corner of her mouth. God. This case was going to be utter hell.


	4. Chapter 4

For a few weeks, the case wasn't so bad. She and Lannister were pursuing completely different lines of inquiry, she was getting somewhere with cooperative potential witnesses, and their meetings were short and clear. He sent a lot of emails, badly spelt but to the point, and she ignored the bad spelling and kept to the point too. It was fine.

Then Sansa was actually indicted. Brienne had spent the morning of the arraignment thinking mostly about Catelyn and how to support her through the process. She was handling it with composure but there were cracks starting to show and Brienne didn't want to think what would happen if bail was refused. It had not occurred to her that Cersei Lannister would be there.

Nothing happened. Cersei didn't speak and her eyes brushed coolly over Lannister as if he was a stranger; she lingered, a little, over Brienne but even that wasn't obvious. Brienne made the arguments, the other side didn't work too hard to contest bail, and Catelyn paid the $10,000. It was simple. Lannister was quiet, useful, handing her what she needed and conferring softly with her about bail terms. It was hard to look at his face.

"Do you," she said later, hesitating on the courtroom steps. "Coffee?"

A little flicker of amusement moved over his face but it didn't last. He looked very tired now that it was over. 

"Yeah," he said. "Thanks."

They got the coffee and he walked her back to her office in silence, his eyes on the horizon. She couldn't stop looking at his rigid profile, sneaking little glances that would have embarrassed her if he'd given any indication of remembering she was there. Estranged. Unwillingly, she remembered how beautiful they had been, intertwined, kissing, laughing, her hair dripping into his face and his hands firm on her hips. That moment of golden joy before they had seen her and ice had overspread them both. She couldn't imagine anything that could have broken them apart. _Symbiosis_ , she had thought in her room later, trying to come up with words to distract herself from the ringing hollow in her ears. _Symmetry. Perfection._ And now this distracted silence. Cersei's unmoved face and tailored black suit. 

Lannister swung open her office door. 

"Thanks for the coffee," he said. He looked normal, if tired, but she couldn't help the worry in the wordless look she gave him and he huffed a small laugh.

"I'm fine," he said. "I don't need your shoulder to cry on, Tarth."

She flinched.

"Just," she said, unwillingly. "If you want to talk."

He stared at her.

"Out of interest," he said, and the note in his voice made her hunch her shoulders defensively. "Is there any kind of wounded animal you won't try to nurse? You _hate_ me, remember?"

She shrugged uncomfortably.

"I just meant," she said. "I don't know who else - I mean there aren't that many people who know, I assume. And I don't mind."

He sighed. 

"You should fucking mind," he said. There was a long pause. He just stood there, his foot still propping the door open. "There's nothing to talk about. She got married. I handled it - poorly."

"Oh," she said. 

He rubbed his hand over his face.

"She wanted us to keep fucking," he said, his voice dragging heavily. "After she married him. She thought that would be good enough."

He looked at her. His eyes were a vivid vicious green.

"I don't believe in good enough," he said. "I don't settle. I couldn't believe she thought I would."

She couldn't think of anything to say. She'd never heard him sound so coldly angry, and for some reason the anger seemed to be directed at her. 

"Okay," she said, floundering a little. She had always been bad at personal conversations. "I mean, I - I get it."

He laughed, humourless. 

"Do you, Tarth? I thought you were _happy_."

For a moment, she didn't understand what he was saying. She stared at him blankly and he smiled nastily as she remembered. Renly. He was comparing - her breath came in a kind of whoop, furious.

"Get out," she said. "You - we're done here. Go."

"Sorry," he said, insincerely. "Didn't realise it was still such a sore point. Where is he anyway?" 

"Renly's at Winterfell," she said thinly. "Working for Ned Stark. I'll see you on Monday."

Something like regret showed in his face.

"Okay," he said. "Monday. Thanks for the-" he waved vaguely and left, shutting the door with a firm click that seemed to echo in her mind. Renly, smiling down at her, earnest, affectionate, utterly remote. _I don't know what I'd do without Brienne._ Something, better than nothing. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. 

She pulled some papers towards her, tried to put some work into another case, but Lannister's voice kept sounding in her ears and she was grateful when the phone rang, glad to be distracted. 

"Brienne Tarth," she said and the voice that replied was a child's voice, frightened.

"Is my mom there? My dad - he -"

"Rickon?" she said, and that was the moment everything changed. Catelyn's face went white, her fingers trembled on the phone as she told Rickon to hang up right now and call 911, okay, and Brienne drove her to the hospital in terrified silence. 

Ned Stark was dead. Winterfell was gone. The money was all, apparently, gone. 

"I can't afford Lannister," Catelyn said helplessly, after the funeral. "I can't afford you. I don't know - the firm - I don't -"

"I can take over your cases," said Brienne. "We can hire another associate. And of course I'll defend Sansa pro bono, you know that. I'll speak to Lannister."

"Yes," he said, when she called. "Yeah. I'll do it pro bono. How is she?"

"Coping," she said. "You'll do it pro bono?"

"Yes."

"Thank you," she breathed. "Jaime, that's - Catelyn was -"

"I'll do it because I want to," he said coolly. "You don't have to thank me."

"Okay," she said. "I'll. See you."

"See you," he said and she sat still, took three deep breaths, before going to tell Catelyn.


	5. Chapter 5

Ned Stark's suicide changed everything. Sansa's anxiety and ambivalence about her case disappeared; she co-operated eagerly, fiercely, giving up every email and text message and IM she had ever shared with Joffrey. Brienne could see that she was marinating in guilt and misery over her part in what had happened to Winterfell - the criminal proceedings had been the stroke that finally crushed the company, leaving Casterly Rock without a serious competitor and Ned Stark in despair - but there was enough lucid rage in her that Brienne felt she might survive. 

Brienne worried more about Catelyn, who was becoming a little less rational, a little less prudent, every day. Catelyn wrote long strange rambling emails, copied to Jaime, and sent at three or four in the morning. She came into the office at six or seven am and shuffled with papers and asked Brienne the same questions over and over. Worst of all, she seemed to be losing sight of Sansa. She wanted Casterly Rock destroyed, she wanted Joffrey and Cersei and even Tywin Lannister implicated in something illegal, she asked again and again if there was anything, anything at all. She sometimes seemed to think their goal was destroying the Lannisters rather than Sansa's acquittal. She had to be redirected to relevant issues. It was sad and awful and it made Brienne a little sick to have to handle Catelyn, of all people, like a crazy client but it was her job and she learned to do it. 

"Coffee," Jaime said one morning, after Catelyn had left the office at last, and Brienne wanted for a demented moment to hug him.

" _Yes_ ," she said, and he handed over her latte without a word and went back to his desk. He was combing painstakingly through the bank accounts, his brow furrowed, and Brienne was so tired and demoralised by everything that she somehow found herself staring unthinkingly at him for a long sluggish minute. There was that newly worn quality to him - he had a little stubble today, faint smudges under his eyes - but he was still, he was so -

He looked up. Her gaze jerked back to her papers. She felt her pulse jump in her throat, idiotic. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. 

"What did I do now?" he inquired, sounding amused and a little puzzled. "You're, like, fire-truck red. Are you embarrassed I got you a latte with that girly syrup you like?"

"No," she said. A pause. "Thank you for the latte." 

He waited. She put her hands in her hair. The only way to distract him would be with some other truth.

"I'm worried," she said, risking a glance at him. "About Catelyn."

"She's losing her fucking mind," he agreed, sounding so unconcerned that a spike of real anger shot through her. 

"And you don't give a shit," she said, goadingly. "This is just a job to you."

"Yup," he said, and smiled sardonically as a fresh wave of blood came hot into her throat and flooded her cheeks. She turned back to her work, almost choking on her anger. 

When she looked up again, ten minutes later, he was back on the bank accounts and there was no trace of a smile. He looked tired and strained, intently focused on what he was doing, and she was suddenly and incongruously reminded of Sansa. Exhaustion and anger and - guilt. It was guilt.

"You're such a liar," she said quietly. This time she met his stare calmly and he was the one who looked away first.

"There is something really fucking weird about these accounts," he said. "Why would Sansa transfer money to her dad via _Ukraine_?"

"Who holds the Ukranian account?" she said and he shook his head. 

"Undisclosed," he said and a little prickle of excitement went through her. This was it. This was something.

"We'll ask for disclosure," she said, and he nodded silently.

It was painstaking hell getting the order and getting the bank to comply with the order and getting through six layers of shell companies and getting orders against all of them but it did the job. Brienne's uneasy hunch turned out to be right: the paper trail led straight to Cersei. The documents told an unambiguous story. Joffrey had stolen from Casterly Rock. Cersei had covered for him and killed two birds with one stone - directing attention away from her son and towards Winterfell. It was theft, and fraud, and perverting the course of justice.

Jaime was white as a sheet. He looked like he might throw up. 

"I'm sorry," Brienne said, inadequately, and he got up and left the room. She heard the slam of the door as he left the building and later he sent an email, a single curt sentence: _I'm out_. 

It didn't matter at that point. Brienne could handle the rest alone, with the help of the new associate, Pod. The charges were dropped. Sansa went home, silently, looking ten years older than she had been when Brienne had met her. Catelyn came back to work after a few months, deep shadows under her eyes but her thin face sober and awake again. Work went on.

Every few weeks, Brienne thought of writing a reply to Jaime's last email. _I know how hard this was. Thank you. You did an incredible job._ It all sounded stupid and clumsy, inadequate to what he had done. He hadn't known, when he had started out defending Sansa, that he was starting on a road that led to Cersei's arrest. He had thought he was defending Sansa, because she deserved defending and he was her lawyer and that was good enough. And then one step had come after another and he had only flinched at the very end, when it was too late.

She remembered an old argument, from the first slow start of their friendship. She had said principles were more important than feelings, and he had called her a robot, and she had opened her mouth to snap back and had realised, with a shock, that he was watching her with a smile that was anticipatory, teasing, almost fond. _Jaime_ , she let herself think now, for the first time since those early, dazzling weeks and months, and the feeling that bloomed in her was terribly familiar, tinted with nostalgia but still as sharply painful as if it was new. _Jaime_.

She tried to think of Renly's solemn face, his eager nods when she talked about access to justice, but she couldn't jump-start the old adoration. Nothing Renly had _done_ could match what Jaime, sullen and reluctant, had let himself do. She could loathe what he looked like, what he seemed like, all she wanted but she couldn't pretend to loathe Jaime any more. He wasn't amoral or dishonest or any of the other things she had tried to believe he was. He was fucked up about his sister, and he cared too much about winning and the trappings of success and things like that, but he was still Jaime.

Accepting that wasn't a huge deal - it wasn't like she had built her _entire_ emotional life around the polar opposition of Lannister and Renly or something - but the collapse of the pretence made her feel tired and old. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she looked as ugly as ever but, she thought, less wounded and more adult. She was done with comforting lies.

Six weeks after the trial, she hit send on the email. She wasn't surprised when he didn't reply.


	6. Chapter 6

Cersei Lannister got six months, and a fine. 

It was the best that could be hoped for - her lawyer had pushed hard on maternal instinct, recent bereavement and substance abuse and the judge had bought it - but it was still jail-time. Brienne had wondered if Jaime might pull off the miracle and keep her out of jail. His fingerprints were all over the case for Cersei, though he never showed up in court. But it didn't happen. Sansa's thin cold face made it impossible, even for a sympathetic judge, to deny the impact of Cersei's crimes.

"Six months," she said out loud, to herself. Her silent apartment felt more silent than ever. It was 9pm, and there were papers she was meant to be reviewing over dinner, but she felt heavy and lethargic and weirdly on edge all at the same time.

She kept looking, despite her better judgment, at her phone. It was stupid but - Jaime did call her, sometimes, when things went bad. He had called her when her dad died. He called her after every shitty case that pissed him off. But the screen stayed dark and silent now. She hadn't seen or heard from him in eight months.

She looked down at the chicken breast and wilted spinach on her plate. She'd come home and cooked dinner for herself, mechanically, but she'd never felt less like eating. She pushed the spinach around on her plate some more and then made herself cut into the chicken.

It was just hard to picture Cersei in jail, even minimum security. She remembered the first time they had met as if it was yesterday. She and Jaime had walked into his room, arguing loudly, and then the most gorgeous woman she had ever seen in real life was standing there, her eyebrows faintly raised, and Brienne's voice had stopped in her throat. 

Cersei had been exquisite in a pale sundress and pearls, standing in a shaft of sunlight. She had smiled at Brienne when Jaime had introduced her, a sharp evaluative smile, and the hot awkward feeling that had overtaken Brienne then never really left her in Cersei's presence. Crazy to imagine anyone telling Cersei what to do, where to go, putting her into a prison uniform. Jaime would -

Her phone buzzed. Jaime. Her heart jumped. 

"Hi," she answered, trying to keep her voice casual. "Are you-"

"Tarth? Brienne Tarth?" 

It wasn't Jaime. It was a voice she'd heard in court a few times, but never addressed to her. She'd never met him, but it was a memorable voice. 

"Yeah," she said. "Is that - Tyrion Lannister?" 

"Smart girl," Tyrion said. "Listen, I need your help." 

She felt a prickle of anxiety. 

"You're calling from Jaime's phone," she said. "Is he okay?" 

Tyrion snorted.

"Of course he's not okay," he said. "That's why I'm calling you. He's drunk as fuck, I don't think he should be alone in his apartment tonight and I have a late flight to catch."

"Oh," she said. "Okay. He can - I'm on 37th street, it's 52. Apartment 12. Bring him over, he can sleep on my couch." She paused. "Why call me? I don't know him that well."

"You're the only actual friend he has," Tyrion said briskly. "He needs someone." 

"That's not," she said, startled and wrong-footed. "He has a bunch of friends. He may not want-" 

"He sure as hell won't want me dumping his drunk ass on anyone else," Tyrion said. "He trusts you. He doesn't trust those other fuckers, they're all sharks. You said 37th street, 52?"

"Yeah," she said, her head spinning. "But look, are you sure he would - he wants to come here? He may not be very happy about it." 

"Why?" Tyrion said. "He knows you from law school, right? He's always talking you up and trying to recruit you. I assumed you were friends."

Her throat felt tight. 

"No," she said. "We haven't been friends for a long time." 

There was a silence.

"Okay," Tyrion said after a few moments, sounding wry and a little annoyed. "Forget friends. If I bring him over there right now, will you call a bunch of journalists to form a welcoming committee? Are you planning to blackmail him about this for the next ten years?" 

"Of course not," Brienne said. "But-" 

"Then I don't care what your drama is," Tyrion said flatly. "That makes you the best friend he has in this town. And I'm - it's been a long, stupid, terrible day and I don't have the energy for this. Will you take him, please?"

"Yes," Brienne said. 

There wasn't any choice when he put it like that, and it wouldn't be so bad. It sounded like Jaime was completely incapacitated right now. She'd let him sleep it off on her couch, it'd be a little awkward in the morning, she'd drop him off at work, and they'd go back to their new normal of ignoring each other completely. She made up the couch as a bed and sat down to wait.

Jaime wasn't remotely incapacitated. He didn't even look that drunk, his green eyes sharply focused on her the minute she opened the door. 

"You brought me here," he said to Tyrion. "To her." 

His tone was disgusted and Brienne had to hide a flinch. She'd known already he wouldn't want to be here. 

"Your brother said you shouldn't be alone tonight," she said. "I have a couch."

"She has a couch," Tyrion echoed, with a faint smile, studying her. All the Lannisters had that unnerving sizing-up way of looking at people.

She nodded awkwardly and Tyrion pushed Jaime a little, over her threshold, said "thanks" and "so long" and then just _left_.

Brienne stared after him and Jaime snorted. 

"He's not big on sentimental goodbyes," he said. "Unlike some of us." 

Brienne went red. 

"I thought," she said. "He said you were really drunk." 

"I am," he said, shortly. His face was very slightly flushed but otherwise he seemed absolutely fine, absolutely himself.

"Oh," she said. "Do you need, um." He waited, eyes gleaming with familiar mockery at her awkwardness. "He said you shouldn't be alone." 

"Yup," Jaime said pleasantly. He smiled at her, one of his rare, dazzling, full smiles. "Did you ever wonder why we didn't fuck?" 

She took a sharp sudden step backwards. What the fuck. 

"No," she said sharply. "Of course not." 

"I wondered," he said cheerfully. "You have - legs. Really great legs." 

"You're so drunk," she said, trying to sound amused instead of flustered and horrified. 

"I really am," he said. "But that's not the point. Didn't you ever wonder? What it would be like?"

"No," she said firmly. "You should. I made up the couch. You should lie down. Sleep this off." 

"I never cheated on Cersei," Jaime announced, very loudly. "Never."

"I know," she said quietly. 

"You look at me," Jaime said. "All the time. Did you know that?" 

She put her hand to her cheek, a stupid involuntary gesture.

"Just," she said. "Jaime, you're very drunk and you're - not yourself. I don't think we should talk now." 

"I thought you liked me again," Jaime said plaintively. "You sent me that fucking ridiculous email." 

It was like vertigo, like missing a step and falling down a fucking cliff. That email. She was ridiculous, of course, she had always known he found her ridiculous, but it was too much to hear it. To her absolute horror, she felt her eyes prickle.

"Don't be like that," Jaime said. "I didn't mean - it was - sweet. Jesus, Brienne, you're still so fucking _sweet_ sometimes. I can't stand it."

"Thanks," she said and he grinned, wide. 

"And then you thank me like you want to kill me," he said. "God. Why _didn't_ we ever fuck?" 

"Because," she dragged out. "We were friends, not - and you love Cersei, and I -" she stopped. 

They had had a screaming ugly fight about Renly once before. _Are you blind_ , Jaime had said. _You're pathetic_ , he'd said. That had broken them for years. He had been drunk then, too, and he was older now, harder, knew her even better. She dreaded what else he might say. 

"I'm so tired, Jaime," she said, before he could speak. "I know today has to have been horrible for you but I just can't talk about this now. Please just stop." 

"I _wanted_ you," Jaime said astonishingly. He laughed a little at the look on her face. "Fuck. Sorry. Okay. I'll stop." 

She turned on her heel and left, fleeing into her bedroom and shutting the door hard. He was stupidly, offensively drunk but he was lucid enough - he would find the couch.

She heard him swear and stumble around in her kitchen, heard the tap running. Her heart was doing this strange thing, insistent but distant, like a drum outside her body.

She brushed her teeth on autopilot, changed, got into bed. Jaime was silent now. When she dared to glance out, an hour later, he was sprawled out on her couch, asleep. She retrieved her papers and laptop and took them into the bed with her. She wasn't getting much sleep tonight anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

Jaime was still asleep in the morning, even after Brienne had showered and dressed and put a pot of coffee on. He lay sprawled on the couch, his arms flung over his head and his face strained even in sleep, and it took a truly idiotic amount of courage to put her hand on his shoulder and shake him.

"Jaime," she said softly. "It's 7.30, get up."

Jaime made an unclassifiable noise, something between a groan and a yawn. One eye slitted open.

" _Fuck_ ," he said with feeling. "My head."

"There's Tylenol and coffee," Brienne said. "Get up."

He sat up heavily. His hair was sticking up, ridiculously, and there was a crease mark across his face. She was overtaken by an involuntary surge of affection at that, at how crumpled and bemused he looked. Why was she so _pathetic_ , she thought. Why couldn't she ever learn?

He looked up at her. She handed him the Tylenol and a glass of water, trying to keep her attitude neutral and matter-of-fact. Maybe he didn't remember. Maybe it wasn't a big deal, to him. He swallowed, and got up.

"Bathroom?" he asked, and she pointed. He disappeared. She heard the shower come on. Her heart was still behaving oddly, loud against her ribs. She was twenty-nine fucking years old, she told herself. Stop being such a girl, she told herself. She sounded like him. 

It didn't help. When he came out of the shower, still in yesterday's clothes but with his hair damp and his eyes clear, she couldn't look at him.

"I've got to go," she said to his shoulder. "I can drop you anywhere on my way to work, if you want. Or-"

"I owe you an apology," he said, and that startled her into meeting his eyes again. He didn't look mocking or amused at all; his face was drawn and tired, sober. "I was a mess last night. I shouldn't have talked to you like that. I crossed a line and I'm sorry."

She stared. She couldn't think what to say. An apology from Jaime was unprecedented.

"Okay," she said, finally. "It's fine."

He immediately looked irritated again, a much more familiar expression.

"It's fine," he repeatedly flatly. "Really."

"It doesn't matter," she amended and his expression soured even more. She sighed.

"What do you want from me, Jaime?" she snapped. "I'm trying to accept your apology. What do you want me to say? Yes, you - you were -" she flailed, trying to articulate what he had done.

"You crossed a line," she said, finally, adopting his phrase in desperation. "You were drunk, and you weren't thinking straight, and I understand why. What else can I say?"

He shook his head.

"Nothing," he said, tiredly. "I really am sorry. Can you drop me off at my office?"

"Sure," she said. 

The silence in the car was awkward but, somehow, not hostile. When she dropped him off, he gave her a wry smile that she couldn't help returning.

"Is this a truce?" he said, his hand on the door of the car, and she smiled properly then, wide and helpless, aware of her horse teeth but not really caring that much. 

"Sure," she said and then it was truce. They had lunch two or three times a week. He emailed her constantly. He texted. He called every few days, for no reason, just to talk. It was like the old days but she was less defensive and he was less arrogant and it just worked better this time. It was easy to fall back into the pattern.

She knew he was distracting himself from Cersei, that sending her stupid memes and provoking her into political arguments was his way of drowning out the nightmare of Cersei's incarceration and his role in it, but she didn't mind. She didn't mind, she told herself. This easy sudden return of friendship was more than she had ever expected to have again. 

Telling herself she didn't mind was a failing strategy. She waited for him to call. His emails and stupid jokes made her smile too much. She had dreams - obvious, humiliatingly revealing dreams - in which Jaime bent over her and said, softly, "I want you," and did things that made it hard to meet her own eyes in the mirror in the morning. A little flutter of nerves started in the pit of her stomach, at random times, when he looked at her. He liked her legs, he had said. She couldn't get past it. 

She began to pull back, a little, protecting herself. She signed up for a martial arts class and began to volunteer at an adult education centre, filling up the time so that she could say she was busy without lying. Catelyn looked at her with disappointment plain in her face whenever she went out to meet Jaime for lunch, so she cut back on that too, telling him she was swamped and couldn't get out of the office. 

"Oh," he said, the fifth time she called to say she had to cancel lunch. "Okay then, what about dinner?"

"I can't," she said. "I have a language class."

"Okay," he said, and now there was a little edge to his voice. "And tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow," she said, stalling. "I don't know, I have to check-"

"Come on," he said, annoyed. "Just tell me the truth. Why are you avoiding me?"

"I'm not," she said, by reflex, and heard his short exhalation of annoyance. "I mean. I really am busy, Jaime. It's not that I don't want to see you."

"You don't want to see me, though," he said and the certainty in his voice silenced her. She couldn't lie. The silence stretched out. She listened to him breathe.

"It's about that night," he said quietly. "Right?"

She didn't answer, which was answer enough. He drew a deep breath.

"Look," he said. "It's - I don't want to lose you. You're the best person I know. Can you please just _try_ to forget that I'm an asshole?"

Her face warmed.

"You're not an asshole," she muttered. "I'm not - this isn't about blaming you, Jaime."

"What is it about?"

She couldn't answer. Her voice would shake if she tried to speak. 

"Brienne," he said, in a low voice that made her skin hum with heat. "Tell me. Please."

"You said you wanted me," she blurted out, her stomach tightening with mortification the second the words were out. "It's hard to forget that. That you said that."

"I'm sorry," he said.

"I don't want you to be _sorry_ ," she said helplessly, and heard his sudden intake of breath. Her hand was shaking on the phone. "I want to forget about it, and I - I can't. I keep thinking about it."

" _Brienne_ ," he said, and there was laughter in his voice again, shocked but still laughter. She closed her eyes.

"I can't," she said. "I don't think I can be friends with you. I'm sorry."

"I don't want to be friends," Jaime said at once, as if he'd been waiting to say it, his voice rough. "I can't believe you think - I've been trying to _stop being friends_ with you for months."

Her mouth fell open.

"What?"

"I want to fuck your brains out," Jaime said, with precision. "Have you seriously still not noticed?"

There was a knock on her door. She was having this conversation at work. Blood buzzed in her ears.

"Come in," she said weakly, and Pod came in. "I'll call you back, okay?"

She hung up. What was he _doing_? She'd thought he'd react badly to the Cersei situation, she thought he'd go off the rails in some way, but this was completely and utterly crazy. She couldn't be his distraction, not this way. She had to tell him so. 

But when he came over that night, when he put his thumb on her mouth, watching her face, she somehow couldn't find the words. Her mind somehow slipped. His hands on her made her head spin, made her feel like a stranger in her own skin. It was the worst decision she'd ever made but it didn't feel like a decision at all.

He looked intensely satisfied afterwards, holding her pinned against the pillows and staring down into her face. She became slowly aware of herself again. Her face was red. She was sweaty and bruised and sore. Her mouth stung with kisses. She wasn't a virgin anymore.

"Does this mean you're going to stop avoiding me?" Jaime asked, grinning down at her, and she smiled weakly back and didn't answer. There was no way to avoid him now, he was under her skin in the most literal way possible. She was naked, in bed, with Jaime, and there was no way to hide anything at all. 

His smile faded a little as he looked at her. He hesitated.

"Listen," he said. "Brienne-"

She cut him off.

"I'm fine," she said. "Don't worry. This was -" His eyes gleamed and she lost her words. 

"I'm fine," she said again, regrouping. There was a bruise somewhere on her shoulder, warm and tender; Jaime had set his teeth there as if he'd been wanting to for years and he had laughed into her skin when her hand had come up to clutch in his hair. There was a weak, shattered feeling in her chest. 

"This doesn't have to be more than it is," she said, quickly, ripping the bandage off. "We, you know, we want - this is something we can do. It doesn't have to be a big deal."

"Wow," he said, softly. "Listen to you."

"What?" she said and he smiled, the narrow flaying smile she hated.

"It's not a big deal," he said. "No starry eyes, no _I'm yours forever_. You're all grown up, Tarth."

"I guess so," she said, exhausted, and he smiled again and rolled off her, closed his eyes. 

"Tell me about the virginity thing," he said. "I know Renly was gay but I thought you dated Hunt for like a year. What happened?"

She struggled to match his nonchalance.

"It wasn't serious," she said.

"And you were holding out for serious," he said. "Until now, I guess."

"You're hotter than Hunt was," she said, trying desperately to keep up and earning a bark of laughter. 

"I'm flattered," he said. They lay still, then, quiet. It was supremely weird to lie beside him, like this, feeling her body hum with a completely unfamiliar kind of satisfied exhaustion, and still, somehow, wanting to touch him. His eyes were closed. His skin was flushed. She couldn't stop looking at him. His mouth went up at the corner.

"I really am flattered," he said, his eyes still closed. "I never thought you could _scream_ my name like that, Tarth. I thought you'd be shy."

He opened his eyes, smirked as she pulled the pillow over her face.

"I hate you," she mumbled and he laughed and kissed her.

"No you don't," he said easily, and she shut her eyes against his shoulder. No. She didn't. This was the most self-destructive thing she had ever done. But she couldn't bring herself to regret it. Something was so, so much better than nothing.


	8. Chapter 8

It was difficult to believe it was happening. She'd been on dates before, had spent a dispiriting year listening to Hyle talk about her great personality and how much he really wanted to be attracted to her, but that was all. Being Jaime's friend with benefits, or whatever the term was, felt like a shocking acceleration, zero to sixty. She was completely out of her depth.

"What?" Jaime said to her, three weeks in, watching her face as he lay beside her, his hand on her naked hip. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she said. She wanted very badly to get under the sheets but he was lying on them and she couldn't ask him to move.

"Tell me," Jaime said, his voice suddenly gentle. "I won't be a dick, I swear, whatever it is."

"It's really nothing," she said. "I'm just not, you know, I'm." She gestured vaguely down at herself, colouring as his eyes followed and lingered. "This feels weird."

"Ah," he said, smiling faintly. "Your body image issues."

"I don't have body image issues," she said, annoyed. "I know what I look like."

It came out sounding flat, defeated. He sighed.

"You have no idea," he said, quietly, brushing his lips over her cheek, and her eyes stung suddenly with how unexpectedly nice he was being. He was still sharp-tongued and impatient in normal life, he still never held anything else back, but he had never said one thing that made her feel bad about her incompetence in this area. It was the one place where he seemed to want to shield her from the truth. 

"I should go," she said, reluctantly. "I've got a client meeting early tomorrow. I should get home."

"Okay," he said. She reached up impulsively and kissed him, feeling her heart thud panickily as it always did when she made the first move. Some part of her was convinced that he was always on the verge of realizing that he had gone temporarily crazy and she was always afraid it would happen just as she was doing something ridiculous like looping her arm around his neck or kissing his shoulder or burying her face in his chest. He kissed her back though, as he always did, and her panic subsided. 

She was being unfair to Jaime, she thought later. He was being surprisingly careful with her, gentle, almost tender; he wouldn't be cruel in this, harsh as he could be in any other context. If he came to his senses, he would try to do it carefully, discreetly, without hurting her feelings. 

"Don't panic," he said when she answered the phone to him a week later. "But I need a favour, okay? It doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to mean."

"What?" she said suspiciously.

He sighed.

"There's this dinner thing," he said. "Tyrion organised it. I need a date."

"What?" she said again, and he blew out an annoyed breath.

"Please be my date to a boring work dinner, Brienne," he said. "I can't go alone, and I don't want to ask anyone out. It has to be you."

"I don't think that's a good idea," she said hastily. "I don't even own a dress that fits."

"You can afford a new dress," Jaime said. "If you don't want to waste your money, I'll buy you the dress. It's going to be so dull, I will not get through it without you. Please."

"You can take someone else," Brienne said quickly. "I won't be annoyed or whatever. It's fine."

"I don't _want_ to take someone else," Jaime said impatiently. "Are you not listening?"

"I know, but this is a client dinner, right?" she said. "I don't want to embarrass you."

"Jesus Christ," he said and hung up. He called back a second later.

"You won't embarrass me," he said in a tone of laboured patience. "I don't know if you've noticed, Tarth, but you're one of the best litigators in town these days. They'll want to meet you."

"I just hate those things," she said. "I hate wearing a dress and being on display and making small talk. I'm really bad at it."

"I know," Jaime said. "So am I. But it's part of the job, so please come help me do it, okay? I'll buy you the dress. I'll do all the work. You just have to show up. Please. Please." 

She laughed at the mock-desperation in his voice.

"Fine," she said. "I'll get a dress."

"Let me?" Jaime said in a completely different tone, low and rich, and she felt her toes curl in her shoes. "I'd like to dress you. I've wanted to for years."

She laughed.

"I know you think I have no taste," she said. "But-"

"Indulge me," Jaime interrupted. "Just this once."

The outfit he brought was something she would never have picked for herself. The dress was a dark navy, with a deep vee-neck, cut almost to her breast bone. It was a soft silky fabric, loose-fitting and dropping modestly to the knee, but the neck-line was not modest. At all.

"Take off the bra," Jaime said, watching her look uneasily down at herself, and she felt herself redden.

"It really doesn't work with a bra, Brienne," he said seriously and he was right. It looked ridiculous.

She couldn't look at him as she unfastened the bra and slipped it out of the sleeve. It wasn't about the fact that he was looking at her breasts, exactly. She was almost used to that by now. It was the _girliness_ of the whole thing, trying on a dress, trying to make it look right. As if she was that kind of person. She thought suddenly of Cersei, applying lipstick in the mirror in Jaime's room, and the way Jaime had watched her, all appreciative admiration. She hadn't understood then why that look had made her feel out of place and unwelcome in the room between them - she had still thought of Cersei only as his half-sister - but the contrast made her wince a little now.

"You look good," Jaime said, standing up to walk around her as she slipped on her heels, studying her critically in the mirror. "You should dress up more often."

"Very funny," she said, smoothing the dress down her hips, and he gave her an odd, frustrated look. He wanted, she knew, to somehow just fix her, to make her confident and bold in her clumsy body, so he didn't have to tiptoe around her issues all the time. It was sweet of him.

"Fine, I look good," she said, to see him smile, and she let the lie carry her through the whole dinner, polite smiles and conversation and ignoring the double-takes at her height and her breadth and Jaime at her side. He kept putting his hand on her waist, lightly, and she felt as if every pair of eyes in the room turned towards them whenever he did it.

"Wonderful to see you again, Ms Tarth," Tyrion said, smiling his sharp little smile. It was late in the evening, Jaime was off talking to a group of drunk businessmen in a corner and the younger Frey son had just given Brienne a business card she was tucking away into the idiotic tiny purse that Jaime had bought her. "I hope all's well."

She took an uneasy sip of champagne.

"It's fine," she said. "Thank you."

Tyrion looked at her for a long moment, seeming to hesitate.

"Jaime," he said. "He's going through something just now. But I know he cares for you. Very deeply."

He looked almost wistful as he said it. Looking at him, she thought he was a little like her. Tyrion, unlike Jaime, knew what it was like to take what you could get and make it be enough.

"I know," she said and then someone touched Tyrion's sleeve and he smiled at her again, a polite smile, and turned away.

"What were you two talking about?" Jaime asked later, in the car. "It looked serious."

"He wanted to be sure I wouldn't break your heart," she deadpanned, wanting to see him laugh. He didn't. There was a smile but it wasn't as light as she was expecting. He's thinking of Cersei, she thought. Of course Tyrion knows about Cersei.

She put her hand on his thigh, trying to be bold, glad that the car was dark and her face was in the shadows.

"Can I stay at your place tonight?" she asked, and he did laugh then and leaned over to kiss her. Good enough. 

She slept over, one of only a handful of times she had done that, warm with Jaime's hand on her belly and his mouth at the nape of her neck. When she woke up, the bed was cold. Jaime was sitting up, his back to her, phone to his ear.

"I love you," he was saying. "Cers. You know that. I love you and we will get through this."

Brienne shut her eyes, her heart racing painfully. Three more months, she thought. She pretended to sleep until he was done with his call, until he got up and left, and then she found him in the shower and pressed him into the wall, kissed him eagerly. Three months wasn't a long time. She wasn't going to lose a minute of it.


	9. Chapter 9

The countdown in her head was unrelenting. Two months and three weeks. Eight weeks. Six. She could see that Jaime was counting down too; he was becoming jittery and anxious, and sometimes she'd find him awake at three in the morning, staring blankly out of the darkened window. Two weeks. A week. Three days.

She put her hand on his shoulder, as he sat slumped in her kitchen after dinner, and he turned and grabbed it in a fierce grip that almost hurt.

"What am I going to do?" he said, looking up at her, his voice sounding lost and tired. "Her whole life - it's gone. No marriage. No money. No custody. There's nothing left."

"There's you," Brienne said quietly and Jaime sighed, his hand relaxing in hers. He kissed her palm gently, with gratitude. Then, differently, he kissed her wrist; she felt the heat of his opened mouth over the thin skin there, the graze of his teeth, and shivered, her pulse quickening. His shoulders relaxed. He grinned up at her. She smiled dazedly back. Then his phone, lying on the kitchen table between them, buzzed. He dropped her hand and grabbed it.

"Yeah," he said. " _What?_ Early release? You didn't even tell me - okay, look, it's fine, when - tomorrow. Are you serious? Tomorrow?"

Tomorrow. Brienne sat down, clumsily, putting her hand flat on the table to support herself. Tomorrow.

"I have to go," Jaime said and she nodded mechanically. "I'll call you."

She mustered up a smile. 

"Okay," she said and he leaned over to kiss her. She thought he was going for a quick peck goodbye and tried to keep it short but he wasn't and wouldn't let her; she fell back in the chair a little, his hand in her hair and his tongue in her mouth, and she was dizzy and uncertain by the time he pulled back.

"I'll call," he said, glaring down at her, and she nodded. 

"Good luck," she said. 

Of course he didn't call. Instead, he fell off the face of the earth for four weeks. She wasn't surprised by that but it did surprise her how much it hurt. She had braced herself, thought she was ready, but his sheer _absence_ did something to her that she hadn't been prepared for. It was hard to think. It was hard to work. Catelyn studied her, thoughtfully; even Pod kept shooting surreptitious glances at her, trying to conceal his sympathy. 

It was pathetic, the most pathetic she had ever been in her life, but she couldn't stop. She didn't have the energy to keep herself from drifting into all the clichés: wearing the shirt he had left behind, rereading old emails, curled over in bed and waiting for the pain to dull. It was nothing like the almost-soft, almost-sweet ache of wanting what she had never had, of wanting Renly. Wanting Jaime _back_ wasn't romantic in the same way, it didn't have that hazy watercolour melancholy about it. It was nothing but painful. She felt as if she had to drag herself through the routine of her day, as if everything - even work - existed somewhere else, where she couldn't quite access why it mattered.

She was lying awake at 6am, telling herself to get up, when her phone lit with a text.

"sorry," it said. Nothing else. She stared at it. Her face went hot. It took a second for her to realise that it was anger. Fury. He was _sorry_? Four weeks of absolutely nothing and he was sorry. She decided not to reply. Her phone lit again.

"crazy here," it said. "C pretty bad. Miss u."

She hit call before she could think. He picked up before the phone had a chance to ring more than once.

"Hey," he said. "Sorry I've been shit. Things are complicated, with Cersei."

"What does that mean?" Brienne demanded, astonished at the raw loud sound of her own voice but unable to help it. "Complicated?"

There was almost half a minute of complete silence. She waited. He could probably hear her hard shaky breathing through the phone, but she couldn't quiet herself. The pain and fury were unmanageable.

"You think I'm sleeping with Cersei," Jaime said, in a slow disbelieving voice. "Brienne. You think I've gone back to - that's what you think is happening here?"

She couldn't speak. He made a strange sort of sound, something between a laugh and a growl.

"Brienne," he said. "She's in rehab."

"Rehab," she said blankly and he sighed.

"Cersei's an alcoholic," he said tiredly. "She got - she always drank too much but it got bad after she got out. Tyrion suggested this place."

"Oh," she said, feeling sick with humiliation. "I'm. Jaime, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"Obviously," Jaime said. There was little pause. She wanted to apologize again but the words stuck in her throat. 

"Cersei and I are not fucking," Jaime said in a dry unreadable voice. "We don't do that any more."

"Okay," Brienne said. Her face felt flayed with heat. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. It's none of my business."

Jaime said nothing. The silence was appalling. She put her hand over her eyes.

"I'm really sorry," she said desperately. "I just - I assumed, and I shouldn't have. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Jaime said, still in that bland voice. "This is pretty interesting. You think I'm fucking Cersei, and you think it's none of your business. Go on."

His voice wasn't unreadable anymore. That was anger, breathtaking, scorching anger. She shut her eyes.

"Jaime," she said. "Can we just - pretend I didn't do that? Please? I don't - I didn't mean to upset you."

Jaime laughed, an oddly shaken sound.

"Brienne," he said, sounding defeated. "I - shit, I have to go. I'll call."

"Okay," she said. 

"The reception here is bad," he said. "And Cersei needs someone with her a lot of the time. If I don't call for a week, it's not because I'm fucking someone else. Okay?"

"Okay," she said weakly, and hung up.

She fell back into bed. Her whole body was a horrified knot of mortification. Cersei was in rehab, sick, and Jaime was taking care of her and Brienne had thrust herself and her jealousy in his face. God. What must he think of her? Her phone dinged again. _dont freak out_ , it said. And then, _we need to talk._

Her head was swimming. She was mortified, but there was also a kind of lightness spreading through her. He was with Cersei, but not _with_ Cersei and it didn't sound like he had any plans to be. He wouldn't lie to her about that. But why? She tried to remember his face when he had said they were estranged. What had he said? He wouldn't settle. He didn't believe in good enough. But Cersei was divorced now anyway, so - 

Her phone rang, loud in the silence, and she grabbed it. 

"What did you _say_ to him?" Tyrion demanded, without preamble. "He's losing his mind. He says he's leaving."

"Oh," Brienne said. "Leaving the - um, clinic? I thought he needed to be there."

"She needs him here, yes," Tyrion said. "She hates me, he's the only one who can get through to her. If you're having some kind of crisis, I understand, but -"

"No no," Brienne said, hastily. "No crisis. He should stay. I'm - tell him we can talk when he's back."

"She says you should stay," Tyrion said. "You can talk when you're back."

Jaime said something Brienne couldn't hear and then a new voice came through, cool and distinct and very familiar. Brienne went cold.

"Is that Jaime's pet?" Cersei didn't sound like she was in bad shape at all. Her voice still had its cutting, carrying quality. "What does she want?"

Tyrion said something, his voice muffled by sudden distance from the phone, and then Cersei spoke.

"Is that Brienne? Tarth?"

"Yes," Brienne said, clearing her throat. Her voice was still raspy and thin. "Tyrion called me."

"Did he," Cersei murmured. "And what did my darling little brother want with you?"

She was damp with sweat. It felt like a fever. She had so hoped never to speak to Cersei again.

"He said," she managed. "Jaime was upset. Tyrion thought I could talk to him."

Cersei laughed, warm and genuine.

"Jaime was upset," she mimicked. "Brienne Tarth. You haven't changed at all, have you? Always following my brother like a lost puppy. Are you still in love with him?"

Blood roared in Brienne's ears. From a distance, she could hear a scuffle at the other end of the phone, loud voices saying things she couldn't make out through the rushing in her ears. The line went dead. Brienne sat at looked at the phone blankly for a long moment. Then she called in sick, turned off the phone, and went back to bed. 

There was no way out. Cersei had said that, in front of both Tyrion and Jaime, and it was possible that Brienne would never leave the house again. She pressed her face into the cool of her pillow, trying to steady her breathing. It was okay. Jaime had been so careful with her, for these few months. He wouldn't. Maybe he would pretend it had never happened and they'd just go back to being friends and that would be okay.

The knock at the door came three hours later. It was a loud angry rap, followed by three rings of the bell. Jaime. She tried vaguely to smooth down her hair before opening the door, but there was nothing she could do to fix the crumpled exhausted way she looked. He stared at her in silence for a long moment, taking her in, and it was only when his eyes drifted that she realised that she was still wearing his shirt. She flushed.

"You didn't have to come," she said, into the silence. "I'm fine."

"You're a _terrible_ liar," Jaime said. "You always were."

There was nothing to say to that. She stood there and he made an exasperated noise and came in, shutting the door firmly behind him. 

"I _love_ you," he said impatiently. "All right? Stop freaking out. I love you, how can you not have -" He cut himself off.

"You always assume you know what I think," he said, after a moment. "What I feel. You never give me a chance."

"I know you - care about me," Brienne said, finally, slowly. "That's not. It's not the same."

"As what?" he asked, coming a little closer, touching her shoulder and then her cheek. Her eyes filled. Damn. She'd tried so hard to keep it together when he was in the room.

"Brienne," he said, and kissed her. She grabbed on his shoulders, gripping tightly. "Tell me."

"You like me a lot," Brienne said. "You think I'm a good person. You enjoy sleeping with me. That's - it's a lot, Jaime, but it's not. It's not enough."

Jaime exhaled. 

"What would be enough?" he said, and she shrugged helplessly.

"I don't know," she said. "I'm. I can't stop thinking about you. I - you know -"

"You're mine forever?" Jaime suggested, a gleam of laughter in his eyes, and she shut her eyes. 

"Yes," she said. 

"You can be such a moron," he said gently. "I don't _like you a lot_ , Brienne. I'm crazy about you. I thought you knew that."

"But," she insisted and he groaned. 

" _No_ ," he said. "I love you. There's no one else for me. I love you."

"You love Cersei," she reminded him.

"I love Cersei," he agreed tiredly. "She's my sister, and we fucked each other up for years, and I feel responsible for her. Do you think that's the same as wanting to spend my life with her?"

She couldn't answer. Her head was spinning. He looked at her.

"I don't know what else to say, Brienne," he said. "I know I'm - I come with baggage. A lot of baggage. And I can understand if you don't want to deal with all that. But don't pretend it's because I don't love you."

"But," she said again, unable to help herself. How could he _love_ her? It didn't make any sense. He sighed.

"Your baggage, on the other hand," he said, touching her cheek again. "I'd like to set on fucking _fire_. Can you please at least try?"

She tried. Jaime loved her, she said to herself. He wanted to - spend his life with her? It still seemed insane. There was an angry tic in his jaw when she looked at him again.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'll - I can try."

" _Were_ you in love with me in law school?" he asked suddenly, the light in his eyes teasing again, and she relaxed. This was easier.

"No," she said defensively. "I just, it was like a crush."

"I thought you were obsessing about Renly back then," Jaime said, still smiling, and she shook her head.

"That was later," she said. "After you."

"Seriously?" 

He looked suddenly incandescent, triumphant.

"You wanted me first?" he asked eagerly and she had to laugh.

" _Jaime_ ," she said, rolling her eyes. "What, are you pretending you were jealous of Renly? You barely looked at me back then."

"I looked at you all the fucking time," Jaime said. "You were too busy looking at Renly to notice."

She started to laugh.

"That is such a lie," she said. "Are you - I was _there_ , remember?"

"I remember being jealous of Renly," Jaime said clearly. "I wanted to kill him. He didn't deserve you."

Her laughter died. He sounded serious. She tried to think back over their past, all the pieces sliding together differently, confusingly. _Jealous?_ He laughed at her expression.

"You thought I was beneath contempt," he said. "You found out about Cersei and you thought I was disgusting and the next thing you were all over Renly for what felt like the next fucking decade."

"That is _not_ what happened," Brienne said and Jaime laughed too and put his hand in her hair.

"I don't care," he said. "I don't care what happened. I've got you now."

She put her forehead down on his shoulder. She still couldn't really - but he sounded so _happy_ , so relieved.

"You still haven't said it," he said. "I said it, like, five times and your stated position is still _this doesn't have to be a big deal._ "

She swatted him lightly.

"I said," she said. "Just now."

"I was really looking for a full sentence," he said. "Come on, Tarth. You're the best litigator I've ever seen in action, you can make a sentence if you really try."

He was teasing, she knew, but his face was expectant and she didn't want to be a complete coward about this. She swallowed. Her throat was tight. His face sobered as he looked at her.

"Jaime," she said, and she let it sound the way it did in her head, charged with longing and desire and despair. He looked startled, a little astonished. She realised slowly that he really didn't know. 

"I love you," she said. "More than anything."

He stared at her.

"That's not true," he said, grinning a little, trying to laugh it off. "What about truth and justice and equity and the welfare of your clients?" 

"More," she heard herself say and stopped. It felt, terrifyingly, true. She wouldn't actually lie or steal for him but it felt like she might. She couldn't be sure. 

"That's terrible," Jaime said mock-seriously, his face lit with laughter. "I guess it'll have to be my job to keep you honest."

"Yes," she said, a little dazed, and then reality came back into focus. "Jaime, what about Cersei? Don't you have to go back?"

His face hardened.

"No," he said. "She can manage."

She looked at him.

"Can she? Tyrion said she needed you."

Jaime shook his head.

"She doesn't," he said. "She needs to stop believing that she does. I'll go visit her and I'll help her buy her new place when she gets out, but I won't just be there all the time. It won't help."

"Okay," she said. He looked down at her and seemed to realise where they were all at once.

"You didn't go to work," he said and she shook her head.

"Called in sick," she admitted and he smiled.

"So we have the whole day," he said, his voice deepening in a way that sent a familiar prickle of heat up her spine. "Tell me about this sleeping in my shirt thing. Have you been doing that a lot?"

"Some," she admitted, and smiled into the kiss and then gasped as his hands slid under the shirt.

"You look," he said. " _Brienne_ , you look-" and she shut her eyes and arched under his touch and almost, almost, almost believed him.


End file.
